It was really, really, really stupid of them to break the universality of Adobe DRM. They could have had me in their eBook camp, but they’ve lost me to the Kindle. As a native New Yorker who has used B&N for years, this is personally frustrating.

I still have to give them credit for their thoughtful attention to detail with videos such as this one:

I’m sure everyone else has seen this by now. I’m dropping it in here so I can find it quickly without having to wrestle with YouTube.

I’m not sure what to think of this. Seeing it drop into the “classic” Windows UI designed for a mouse made my hair stand on end in horror.

And that makes me wonder how “classic” Windows features will be handled with this new UI; things like listing, moving, copying, and renaming files.

I also wonder if they’ve considered how that UI can tie in with Kinect? I’m sure some people will still want an upright screen and reaching up to do touching will be an RSI nightmare. Using Air Gestures would be great.

In one of his first meetings with employees, Elop recalls, he complained that there were different keystrokes required to mark an e-mail unread on the various Nokia phones he used. When an engineer in the crowd stood up and said Elop was wrong, the CEO invited him on stage to prove it. After some tapping, the engineer sheepishly backed off. “You’re right,” he admitted.

No one looking at everything. No one to ensure consistency. No one to overrule any group going rogue. No one taking a stand. No one there to make the final decision. No goddammed courage to say, This is just wrong! Fix it!